U.S. to Withhold $34M in U.N. Funds

Associated Press, 22 July 2002, Filed at 2:20 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP)—The Bush administration will not pay $34 million it
earmarked for U.N. family planning programs overseas, an initiative
aimed at controlling population but one that conservative groups
charge tolerates abortions and forced sterilizations in China.

Critics of the decision said they smelled politics at work.

Administration officials, lawmakers and interest groups that monitor
the issue said Sunday they have been told the decision is final. One
administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an
announcement is likely from the State Department on Tuesday, but added
the timing could change.

White House officials said privately that conservative activists have
for months quietly pressured the administration to prove President
Bush’s anti-abortion credentials by permanently denying money to
the United Nations Population Fund. The fund helps countries deal with
reproductive and sexual health, family planning and population
strategy.

Conservative activists helped carry Bush to the presidency, and White
House political advisers have carefully tended them with an eye to his
re-election. But the decision on family planning could also damage
Bush’s standing with moderates and women.

The White House has kept the politically delicate decision a closely
guarded secret. It has refused to divulge it even to allies in
Congress, such as the Pro-life Caucus.

More than a dozen administration officials, inside the White House and
out, declined to comment Sunday or did not return phone calls on the
matter, so the reasoning behind the decision was not clear.

Just last year, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate that
the U.N. agency does invaluable work and provides critical
population assistance to developing countries.

Bush himself proposed $25 million for the organization, an increase
from the $21.5 million the fund got during the last year of the
Clinton administration. Key lawmakers later agreed on $34 million for
the agency.

The president has already signed into law the foreign aid bill that
contains the $34 million. But when he did so in January, he noted in
an accompanying statement that it gives him additional discretion
to determine the appropriate level of funding for the United Nations
Population Fund.

Two administration officials said Bush is now likely to channel the
$34 million to family planning organizations run by the State
Department’s Agency for International Development.

A study from a U.S. government fact-finding mission to China in early
May reportedly found no evidence that the U.N.’s program
directly or indirectly facilitates forced sterilizations and abortions
in China. A British delegation visited China a month before the
U.S. team arrived and its investigators also did not find evidence
that U.N. funds were misused for such purposes.

Bush sent $600,000 to the U.N. fund in November for humanitarian
relief in Afghanistan. The money has been used to provide sanitary
napkins to Afghan women and medical assistance with labor and
delivery, officials said.

In advance of the administration’s formal announcement, 48
members of Congress asked Bush last week to explain why he had
withheld the $34 million after approving it in January.

The lawmakers said they wanted to share our understanding of
how U.N. Population Fund programs in China operate. They also asked
the president to release the report from the U.S. fact-finding mission
to China.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan promised last week that the
administration will release the report when Bush’s decision on
the U.N. money is formally announced.

Critics of the decision said it was driven by politics.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., attributed it to the White House’s
mindless zeal to take care of their right-wing base.

My information is that it’s permanently withheld, and
that’s good news to people who think like I do, Hudson
said. The U.N. population fund is bad policy because it relies on
population control rather than economic development to address
problems of poverty; and the problem is not population, the problem is
underdevelopment.